


New Dawn, New Day

by benjaminrussell



Series: Shadow of the Templar Week 2017 [1]
Category: Shadow of the Templar - M. Chandler
Genre: First Meetings, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 14:34:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12060969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benjaminrussell/pseuds/benjaminrussell
Summary: SotT Week 2017 - Day 1: New BeginningsWhen Nate first meets Johnny, he's certain he's going to fall for him. It takes him a while to do anything about it though...





	New Dawn, New Day

Come Monday morning, Nate found himself glancing up at the door every time someone walked past the Team Templar safe room. The final member of the new team was starting today, and given the eclectic mix of people Simon had picked so far, Nate was curious to see what the new guy would be like. All he knew so far was that he was called Johnny Pilgrim and that he was transferring from the Austin Police Department, the latter of which being why he wasn’t already there – as he was an external applicant Simon was giving him a tour of the building and making sure his paperwork was all sorted. Nate had considered looking up Johnny’s personnel file as it would be on the system by now, but he’d dismissed the idea almost as soon as he’d thought of it – it was probably a bit stalkerish, and he could wait just a little bit longer and meet the man face to face instead. In fact they were probably due to be done with the tour any minute now by his reckoning.

Five minutes later, another lot of footsteps could be heard coming from the hallway, but this time they petered out outside the safe room. Nate looked up again in expectation, inwardly glad to see that he wasn’t the only person in the room doing the same thing – in fact everyone seemed to be paying more attention to the door than their work, even Rich who didn’t seem to really like people. Then the door finally opened and Simon led the way into the room, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards slightly at the sight of his team’s clear curiosity. He stepped to the side and they all got their first look at their newest colleague, a tall, dark haired man who Nate could easily imagine in stereotypical Texan attire, cowboy hat and all.

“Everyone, this is Johnny Pilgrim,” Simon said. Johnny raised a hand and said, “Nice to meet y’all,” before Simon carried on with the introductions, ignoring Mike’s cry of “Texas!”, and pointing to each of them as he went.

“This is Sandra, aka Springheel, my second in command. That there is Mike, code name Honda, and then hiding behind their computers over there are Rich and Nate, Specs and Specs 2 respectively.” Sandra stood up from her seat at the conference table and moved to greet Johnny, offering her hand to shake as she said, “Nice to meet you too.” That gave Nate the courage to do the same, carefully extricating himself from where he’d been fiddling with the phone tracing hardware, before crossing the room and sticking his hand out at Johnny.

“I’m Nate,” He said unnecessarily as the older man shook his hand, unable to help but notice the strength behind Johnny’s grip and the feeling of the warm, lightly calloused hand in his own. He fought the blush he knew was likely to accompany those thoughts, and thought he’d been successful, at least until he spotted the twinkle in Johnny’s eyes as he replied, “Johnny.”

'Oh no, Nate thought, 'He’s got a sense of humour.' He was well aware that so far Johnny was ticking all the boxes to be exactly Nate’s type, and considering that they were going to be working together for the foreseeable future, he could easily see himself falling for him.

***

Years later the attraction was still there, simmering away in the background, and Nate had definitely fallen for Johnny. Head over heels. He’d never done anything about it though. He kept seesawing between being convinced Johnny would never like him romantically, and suspecting that the other man felt the same way that Nate did, but even when Johnny had done something that could only be interpreted as serious affection, like giving up his Friday night to bring Nate soup when he was ill and his mother was visiting family, Nate had never managed to build up the courage to say something.

It turned out however, that the prompt he needed was Simon coming out to the team, telling Upstairs about his relationship with Jeremy and then heading straight to god knows where to enjoy the free time that being suspended gave him. All of the rest of the team still had some of their booked holiday left when they got back from Italy, so they’d all agreed to meet up on Saturday for their usual poker night and then headed their separate ways to take some much needed alone time. Three days later, Nate was beginning to get bored though. He’d unpacked, given his mother a version of his official ‘visiting friends in Portland’ story, and caught up on the internet, and now he was running out of things to occupy himself with. He briefly considered messaging Dave and asking if he wanted to play some WoW, but then decided he was finally going to take the plunge and ask Johnny out. Even if he said no, then Nate would still have a few days to get over it before they went back to work and he had to face Johnny. It would still be awkward, but he knew Johnny would never rub it in his face. He was nice like that. Nate pulled out his phone and before he could think too much into it, he sent Johnny a text.

_Do you want to go out for dinner with me tonight?_

Then he put his phone down on his bookcase so he couldn’t keep looking at it, and went back to his computer, loading WoW anyway to distract himself. Just because it would probably take Johnny a while to reply, didn’t mean that it was it was bad –he didn’t always look at his phone when he was at home, and he might be busy anyway. At least that’s what Nate kept telling himself, his attempts to not dwell on it unsuccessful.

It was an hour or so later that his phone beeped, signifying he had a new message, and he almost tripped over his computer chair in his rush to pick it up. He quickly navigated to the message, heart jumping into his throat as he saw that it was indeed from Johnny, and opened it.

_Sorry, was at the range._

'Of course,' Nate thought fondly, before reading the rest of the message.

_I’d love to._

He stopped himself from crying out in delight, if only so his mother didn’t come to investigate, but he couldn’t help but give a quiet ‘yes!’ and punch the air. Then his phone beeped again, with another text from Johnny.

_Thought you’d never ask._

Nate snorted. Trust him to have spent ages doubting that Johnny liked him as he’d never said anything, only for Johnny to have just been waiting for Nate to make the first move. He had a sneaking suspicion that the other man hadn’t wanted to make him feel pressured or uncomfortable, while in reality he’d just been too scared to bring up the subject. He replied to Johnny before googling the number for a nice local restaurant he’d been to a few times and ringing up to book a table.

_Well I have now. :) Meet me at my house at 6:30?_

Johnny’s response came quickly, making Nate feel warm inside at the thought that Johnny had to be keeping his phone in his hand waiting for a reply just like Nate was.

_I’m glad. Yeah. Looking forward to it._

Nate couldn’t contain his smile at that, grinning to himself as he typed out a simple reply, even as he started worrying about what to wear and what if the date went badly.

_Me too._


End file.
